In recent years, various types of traffic information distributing apparatuses that distribute traffic information according to a transmission request received from a navigation apparatus installed in a vehicle have been proposed.
One example is a traffic information distributing apparatus that receives a transmission request from a navigation apparatus installed in a vehicle by using a communicating unit, extracts, according to the received transmission request, traffic information that corresponds to roads within a predetermined range that includes a current position of the vehicle by using a traffic information extracting unit provided in an information distribution center, and distributes the extracted traffic information to the navigation apparatus by using a communicating unit (see, for example, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. JP-A-2002-286469, paragraphs 0012 to 0063 and FIGS. 1-10).